Twelve places in a year — that shouldn’t be difficult. Or at least that’s what I thought when I decided on it as a target during a drunken moment.
But the Philippines have changed how their national holidays work, previously most would be moved to the nearest Monday or Friday meaning that last year there were 16 national holidays that fell on a work day. This year there’s 7, meaning that I’m effectively working with two weeks less holiday than last year.
So I’ve been over-analyzing everything, is two nights enough? Would I be better to go for fewer longer trips, or lots of weekend hops? Is it worth the money? Etc. While fretting about this I got an e-mail from our local budget airline Cebu Pacific (think EasyJet but with singing aircrew) offering cheap flights to China at around 40 pounds each way and local flights for only a few quid. Not bad! But I continued to deliberate and by the time I decided just to book it the offer was sold out.
There’s a lesson to be learned there, and I did. So today, when they offered the same deal on trips to Bangkok, I jumped on it with as much enthusiasm as I can muster on a Tuesday morning. Upshot: I’m going to Bangkok in June and I’ve decided the best way to ensure I actually go different places is to just book it and hope for the best.
So here’s todays travel tip (which I’ve heard before, most recently on an annoying Discovery channel advert with the particularly annoying Ian Wright): Just buy the damn ticket and sort the rest out later.
Simples!